In My Time of Dying
by Jack Brocket
Summary: 'He died doing the right thing.' Flash one shot. An old friend appears to Harry in his last moments. Rated on the side of caution.


Right. Very short oneshot. No editing whatsoever, so pardon any technical and content errors. Book-verse, with the sole exception of Bob having a face. This is something I had to write, after reading a particular scene in 'White Night.' I rather like it, and hope you do as well.

Standard disclaimers, etcetera.

¬W

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'Harry.' Bob said. I looked from him to the pitiful bundle of leather duster, bloodied and running with the rain that came in sheets, and back. I opened my mouth to greet the old ghost, to make a dry comment, to weep. Nothing escaped the iron grip around my throat.

Bob looked good. Even standing in the midnight gale amid a field of corpses, he looked good. White hair unruffled, semi-modern black suit and claret vest neither windswept nor dampened. And it seemed to me - were those old eyes content?

'Bob.' I managed to croak at last. The spirit smiled that familiar smile, stepped up to me and - unbelievably - put his hands on my shoulders. I took a breath. Last time Bob had touched me had been more than a century ago. Then, his hands had been solid but cool, strong, vitally alive. Now they were warm, and something _more _than alive.

I knew why Bob was here. 'I can't leave, Bob.'

'Look around you, boy. You slew your foe, the last and greatest of a procession spanning nearly two hundred years. The evil has been subdued, for now. There is nothing more any man could do.'

'I'm not just any man, Bob.' I said. But I looked soberly down at my body. There was no way I was coming back from this, at least not in that particular package. Even I wasn't that good.

'Yes, I know.' I could hear the smile in Bob's voice, and the wonderful familiarity of the tone drew my gaze upward again. 'You've become quite a Titan,' Bob continued, and the paternal pride behind his eyes made my heart swell ridiculously, as though in these final moments I had slipped back into the distant past, and he was praising a spell well wrought or a Latin phrase well delivered.

'Vampire Courts. Fairy Courts. Apocalypses. A god or two. And now an Outsider. A lesser man would have been annihilated decades ago; I can only bring to mind one other wizard who has accomplished anything like what you have.'

'Mickey Mouse.' I guessed.

'Him,' Bob smoothly dispatched my attempt at humour by using its own impetus against it in favour of the greater entity he was driving at. It was like he'd never left. 'And Merlin.'

I didn't respond. Thunder rolled overhead.

'A great man, Harry. You've left your mark. You will be remembered for centuries, first as a legend, then as a myth. You are immortal now. A god in your own right.' He clapped one hand lightly against my cheek and looked at my fondly, knowingly.

'A lonely god.'

Lonely. The word itself cut into me. He'd left. Karrin had left. Thomas. Michael and his family. Even Billy and the werewolves; even Mister, even Mouse. I closed my eyes and allowed myself a brief pang for them all: my teacher, my wife, my brother, my friends. And before them, my parents, my uncle, my first love, and all those I couldn't save in those early days when I had not come to power. For fifty years I had been completely alone.

'Everyone is waiting for you.' Bob said gently. 'All of them.'

'What's it like?' I whispered.

'I couldn't tell you. But it's waiting.'

People were beginning to walk slowly onto the silent battlefield, checking the carnage for wounded. As I watched a young man found my body and dropped to his knees with a squelch of mud. He was an infant, really, only recently come into his true strength as a wizard. His grey cloak was spattered with gore and his hair clung wetly to his pale face, the rain mixing with his blood and the blood of monsters. I clenched my jaw and watched as he turned my body over, mechanically checked its pulse and carefully, lovingly, straightened my silver pentacle around its neck.

'Dad.' He croaked.

Not alone. Not alone at all. I swallowed hard, trying hard to get my suddenly rigid muscles to relax.

'My -' son, I tried to say, but had to clear my throat fiercely to continue. Bob didn't interrupt. 'I can't leave my son.'

'That's what every father says,' Bob reminded me kindly, 'whose time comes before his child's. That's what yours said. But Thomas will be all right. He'll grieve. The wound will heal with time.'

I wanted to argue. But Thomas was speaking. His voice was haggard with the effort of talking through the emotion I could hear tearing at him, and I crouched beside him, facing him over myself.

'You did it, Dad.' he muttered, looking at the corpse's closed eyes. 'You got it. It's okay now. Everything's going to be okay.'

I hardly noticed that my legs had betrayed me until I was sitting on my rear in the muck, tears streaming down my face.

'He is his father's son, Harry.' Bob said from above us. 'He'll be all right. And he'll make sure everyone else is, too.'

I didn't know how Bob had come to be here, when his skull had been destroyed decades ago, but I had expected it all the same. I'd known it. I was glad of it.

'Will you come with me, Bob?' I asked, shaking, as scared as that ten-year-old boy had been after a day of Justin Dumourne's magical training. Bob made a noise somewhere between a breathy laugh and a sigh of pain.

'You know I can't, Harry.' His voice was soft.

I nodded. 'Can I - can I stay a while with you?'

'A little while. You have some time.'

I nodded again. Suddenly I caught sight of my hand. My eyes widened and I lifted it in front of my face to stare at it. It was the hand of a ten year old. It was also the hand of a thirty-five year old, and a man of eighty, and two hundred, and seventeen, and two. All of the years I'd lived were packed into my hand, or what I was seeing where my hand had been. I looked at myself. My incorporeal body was the same. I was every age, every stage of life, from my first breath to my last. I looked up at Bob and just gaped at him for a moment, unable to speak.

'Well,' I managed at last, 'that explains some things.'

Bob chuckled. 'Come on, Harry. Let's not stay here; I'll walk you part of the way.'


End file.
